French ministry in Africa is growing day by day. The One Africa Team is currently working and in contact with ten different francophone church groups in various countries. One of these churches is the Mission Evangélique Luthérienne au Congo (MELC) from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Travel Challenges

MELC’s church headquarters are located in Lubumbashi, a town close to the border of Zambia. Because of the conflict in DRC, the MELC church leaders travel across the border to meet us in a town in the northern part of Zambia called Ndola. This is a great blessing because we are still able to work on growing our relationship with our Congolese brothers, even though we are currently unable to travel to their country.

CICR Meetings

This past January, we moved another step towards growing closer with MELC. On this trip, we brought Professor Brad Wordell from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary to join us in our meetings with church leaders. Prof. Wordell serves WELS not only as a professor, but he also serves on the Commission of Inter-church Relations (CICR).

Bringing a representative from CICR to evaluate MELC’s church constitution and confession of faith is a vital part of our four-stage process in establishing formal fellowship with our partners in Africa. We were able to discuss in detail these documents, as well as plans for ministry training and our goal of growing together in God’s Word.

Spirit-filled Worship

While we were in Ndola with MELC, we organized a joint worship service. Approximately twenty-five MELC members from Lubumbashi travelled down to Ndola to participate. It was a great opportunity to experience how our brothers and sisters worship, as well as listen to their choirs who sang in both French and Swahili!

We look forward to growing even closer together with our French-speaking brothers, and we pray that God continues to grow their ministry in the DRC. We also continue praying for political peace so that we might one day return to the DRC to visit our new friends at their local churches.

Missionary Jake Vilhauer lives in Lusaka, Zambia

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news, and receive updates. Learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts at https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa

Jake Vilhauer recently graduated from Martin Luther College (MLC) and is a new missionary for the One Africa Team.

Coming out of Martin Luther College I initially planned on becoming a high school history teacher. In history teacher fashion, here’s a crash course of the last eight months of my life. I was informed that I was being considered for an international call. I accepted that international call. I graduated from MLC and announced my call to my family, who were shocked – the understatement of the year.  I got married to Maddie Hockenbery on the 1st of June and shipped off to Zambia in August.

Learning Curve

Ten days after arriving in Zambia, my wife and I left for France to begin our French-speaking journey. We stayed in Strasbourg and went to French school every day, starting from scratch. Thanksgiving came quickly, and we left France to live with another missionary family in Douala, Cameroon to learn more French and to learn about West African culture. Soon we will return to Zambia and settle down in our own place.

The work that I have been able to do as a missionary with the One Africa Team is awesome, to say the least. I have worked with multiple groups of potential partners. Four seminary teachers from West Africa came to Douala and I helped them with educational strategies for the future. I have also taught online TELL classes with people all over Africa, studying the Bible in depth.

God’s Plan

There have been some challenges with being away from family, learning a new language, and learning a new culture. However, these past months have helped me to grow in my faith and learn how to work on a team. Although we are far from our families in the States, we were instantly provided with new families on the mission field. There has not been a lack of support from anyone, and I am truly grateful for that.

The past five months away from home have been a whirlwind. I never thought I would be a missionary. I would joke with Maddie about going abroad to annoy her. I had not heard of a World Missions call from MLC. People say that God hears our plans and laughs – that was true in my case. In the last year, God allowed me to graduate from MLC, receive and accept a World Missions call, get married, learn a new language, and live on three different continents. I pray that God blesses our missionary work here in Africa.

Jake and Maddie Vilhauer live in Lusaka, Zambia

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news, and receive updates. Learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts at https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa

Immersion matters! Now wait, before you go crying “Heresy!” on me, understand what I mean. I’m not talking about baptism here. I’m talking about language immersion—in this case, French language immersion.

For 3 weeks in January, I left my home in Zambia to live in and study French in Lyon, France. I lived in the 21^st-century equivalent of a monk’s cell in a big apartment building. I rode the trams and the subway to and from my language school each day. In Zambia, it was summer, and (as always) it was blazing hot. Since I’m a Canadian, it was a pleasure to experience Northern Hemisphere winter again (although I didn’t have a coat to take along with me from Africa).

Food Immersion

Cheese is my favorite food, and France is pretty much the Valhalla of cheese. I would love to tell you about the many varieties of cheese I consumed along with slices of Lyonnaise rosette sausages or Corsican coppa ham on baguette. But this article is supposed to be about language immersion. Besides being a great place to be immersed in cheese, Lyon is also a great place to be immersed in the French language. The second-largest city in France, Lyon lies at the confluence of the Saône and Rhone rivers, and it has a standard metropolitan French accent.

So, why was a standard accent important for me? My job as a missionary takes me to many French-speaking countries of Africa: Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Benin, for example. I also work with French-speaking Lutherans from countries that I’m currently not able to visit, such as Togo and Burkina Faso. Having lived in Ottawa, Canada, for 9 years, I can tell you that the African French accents are much closer to a standard metropolitan (i.e., European) French accent than anything I ever heard in Canada. So, I went to France to study and practice French for 3 weeks because it has the variety of French that all the African forms are based on.

Linguistic Leap Forward

In Lyon, I did not only study all morning and afternoon in a French school. I also went out and used my French around town. Going to board game clubs and shops. Eating at a traditional mom-and-pop style restaurant called a “bouchon”. Helping several French people locate different books they were looking for in the big, huge FNAC bookstore. Joking about the strange, spaceship-like public toilets with folks waiting for their family members to come out. Shopping for a coat in the mall at the Superdry store. I’m figuring out how to get my cell phone working at the Orange shop.

Immersion was a great experience. I’d never been to France before, so it was amazing to hear French all the time and to get used to listening to and speaking nothing but French. My ear has picked up the pace since my immersion, and so has my ability to express my own “very deep” thoughts—JK!—in French. I think it will be a big benefit if I can go back for another round of immersion sometime next year. But my best French immersion is coming up in March—with a trip to visit Lutherans from Benin and Burkina Faso—and in April—with a trip to teach a workshop on Luther’s small catechism in the Congo. For then, I will truly have great content to communicate in French: the true message about Jesus Christ! I can’t wait to take along the cool new bible I picked up in France.

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news, and receive updates. Learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts at https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa